You’d be hard-pressed to find a local nonprofit that brought its outsized quest to fruition more speedily than did the […more…]

United Way onboards two new directors to guide expansion in community programming United Way of Santa Barbara County has announced […more…]

Victoria and Bill Strong brought their baby home with that mix of gratitude and indescribable joy – the heart-squeezing hallmarks […more…]

Under the leadership of David Bolton for the last 12 years, the California Missions Foundation has raised millions of dollars to preserve the state’s collection of historic Spanish missions and made their priceless collection of colonial and native art and artifacts an education destination for hundreds of thousands of visitors each year including tens of thousands of elementary school students. Beginning in the mid-1700s, the Spanish built 21 missions from San Diego to Sonoma that today provide a unique trail of history across California or what was then called Alta California. Bolton, who grew up in Santa Barbara – which [...more...]

The Community Farm is surely the jewel in the crown of communal self-reliance. Here we have a plot of food-producing […more…]

“I think our youngest client this year was 10 years old. Sadly, the age has been skewing lower. Three or […more…]

The California Missions matter. Historic preservation keeps alive our history and it allows us to remember the stories and experiences […more…]

Until a person can eat, sleep, and have a roof over one’s head, their mental and physical energy is consumed […more…]

In every great city is a community park that serves as its beating heart. Elings Park in Santa Barbara has […more…]

Who are we? The Visual Arts and Design Academy (VADA) at Santa Barbara High School is a unique “school within […more…]

On a recent morning at Holocaust Museum LA (HMLA), Betsy, a docent, was leading a tour group of 20 LA […more…]

On a cool September Sunday, a group of Marine Watchdog kayakers paddled into a sea cave on the rocky coastline […more…]

When a calamity befalls us, we are reassured that our First Responder protectors are on the job and doing their […more…]

Imagine a kid. He’s your son, and he has big plans. He wants to attend college and launch a startup. […more…]

Despite living with RUNX1 familial platelet disorder (RUNX1-FPD), Tim Babich lived a happy life with his wife, Monica. After the […more…]

“With Wayfinder, we don’t feel like my son has a disability. We feel like everyone else.” This is the gift […more…]

Santa Barbara Humane, founded in 1887, was one of the first animal welfare agencies in the country, opening nearly seven […more…]

More than one billion people worldwide live with treatable vision loss due to a lack of quality eye care. While […more…]

Jackie Carrera, President and CEO, Santa Barbara Foundation. (photo by Dean Zatkowsky) Santa Barbara Foundation’s latest report on the State of Nonprofits in Santa Barbara County, published in autumn of 2023, indicates that the total of such organizations has now soared past 2,000 – a significant number considering that the county’s total population is just a tad over 455,000. It might seem both difficult and daunting to navigate among nonprofits, given that there are multiple, often single-issue organizations, serving nearly every imaginable sector, all of which do important, impactful work.  That’s where the Santa Barbara Foundation (SBF) comes in, and [...more...]

For Yvette Birch Giller, president and COO of Santa Barbara’s Mosher Foundation, philanthropy is a family affair. Working alongside both her father, Ed Birch, the Foundation’s chair and CEO, and her mother, Suzanne Birch, a trustee and education program specialist, Giller, after 13 years at Mosher, is preparing to take the reins from the man she calls her mentor, her role model, and her biggest cheerleader. Today, Giller finds herself at the nexus of the gradual sunsetting of Santa Barbara’s legendary philanthropic foundation trailblazers, and the dawn of a new generation of foundation leaders. And Giller has the benefit of [...more...]

Tammy Johnson, Santa Barbara Foundation’s Vice President of Philanthropic Services since April of 2022, didn’t set out to work in philanthropy. The daughter of a 35-year Southern California Gas Company employee, Johnson grew up in La Puente in the San Gabriel Valley, attending the public school system through high school. It was there that a guidance counselor pointed her toward what she thought might be her career. “He encouraged me to think about journalism because I was a school leader always doing the announcements over the PA, and I was a pretty strong writer,” Johnson recalls. “But I was still [...more...]